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It’s the start of kitten season — typically during the warmer months between March and October — when tiny, adorable wide-eyed kitties begin to appear seemingly out of nowhere, peeking out from behind bushes and underneath backyard sheds. This is feline breeding season, when unspayed female cats often give birth to multiple litters. And the result is cat overpopulation, when thousands of unwanted, homeless kittens flood animal shelters across the country, including here in the Brazos Valley.
“It’s the calm before the storm,” says Texas A&M University alum, Mallori Girard, who co-founded Six Kittens Rescue four years ago in Bryan with her wife, Jai. “Our goal whenever we started the organization was to [address] the biggest problem that we saw, which was the overpopulation of feral and community cats in our community,” Mallori says. “Last March, we had 97 kittens in the program at one time. I thought my head was going to explode!” she says.
Their efforts incorporate TNR, a widely known, effective way to minimize the unwanted cat population. TNR stands for trap, neuter, and return: first, homeless cats are caught humanely; they are neutered or spayed and vaccinated and then returned to where they were first found. “This past year we were able to spay or neuter 73 community cats. That's 73 cats on the street that are no longer reproducing,” Mallori says. “Our goal for 2022 is 85 feral cats.”
“Ultimately, what we wanted was to not only reduce the unwanted cat population but also reduce the spread of disease among a community of cats,” Mallori says. Owners with outdoor cats have a higher risk of their cats getting sick with highly contagious diseases that have a significant impact on their quality of life, she explains. Those diseases are easily spread and transmitted throughout the cat colonies with no cure for them.
In the beginning
Mallori and Jai’s initial interest in helping homeless cats began one evening when they came upon a litter of sickly kittens in a Bryan parking lot. “We stopped and there was a tiny little kitten and as soon as I walked up to him, he fell over,” Mallori says. They rushed the litter to the vet, and after several weeks of nursing them back to health, the couple found homes for the kittens with friends. Mallori was working at a vet clinic at the time. “I would just come home with kittens,” she says. “We would get them vetted and then find them homes, and then we had started with spaying and neutering some of the community cats in the area.”
One day, a friend reached out to Jai for help with a feral cat colony that his mom was feeding. Mallori and Jai went out the next day. “Kittens were everywhere,” Jai remembers. They trapped six kittens, which became the impetus for their rescue and the inspiration for its name, Six Kittens Rescue, which they established as a nonprofit in 2018.
Ways to help
Six Kittens does not have a brick-and-mortar location and is entirely volunteer and foster-based. “We are always looking for fosters and donations, as we are entirely donation operated. Our adoption fees only cover 50% of what we spend on a healthy kitten,” Jai says. The rescue accepts monetary donations and has wish lists that can be fulfilled online through Chewy and Amazon, she says.
“Fostering is always a great way to give back,” Jai says. The commitment time can vary based on the animal’s needs and adoption process, she says. Currently Six Kittens has a team of approximately 20 to 25 volunteers who provide temporary accommodations for the cats. “All we ask of our foster families is to open their home and their hearts to give them what they need,” she says. “We provide all supplies necessary: litter, litter box, food, bowls, toys, as many toys as you can imagine,” Jai says. “We don’t want our foster families to be stressed about being able to provide for their foster pets. That’s our job.”
Six Kittens is a neonatal rescue, specifically dedicated to taking in kittens that are younger than adoptable age, as well as pregnant females. “We focus on the teeny tinies, and we take kittens as early as one day old,” Mallori says. “We have fosters that are up every two hours bottle feeding these kittens, helping them go to the bathroom, keeping them clean, and watching them grow from basically a little potato into an animal that has a personality, that is rambunctious and running around your house!” The rescue has a private Facebook group to keep fosters and new owners connected, “especially with the ones that are difficult and sick, because you are literally doing everything in your power to help this animal survive,” Mallori says. “I think all the time about the first bottle babies that I had,” she says.
“The only foster fail we’ve ever had, is our little guy Orion,” Mallori says. His foster thought there might be something “off” about him, so they took the kitten to the vet, and he was diagnosed with a neurological condition called cerebellar hypoplasia, commonly known as wobbly cat syndrome and has recently been diagnosed with cerebellar abiotrophy as an adult. “We started talking about adopting him out, and I just lost my mind, so we ended up keeping him,” Mallori says. “We're going to do whatever we can to help the little guy, and we couldn’t imagine our family without him,” she says.
Since it was founded, Six Kittens has safely spayed and neutered a total of 300 feral cats and has found forever homes for over 600 felines. “We want to do our part to educate the community,” Mallori says. “There are resources available here at a low cost that help make the cats healthier.”
For more information, visit sixkittensrescue.org
Additional resources
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/sixkittensrescue/
Website/Petfinder: http://www.sixkittensrescue.org/adoptable-pets/
Chewy Wishlist: https://bit.ly/3uqX19L
Amazon Wishlist: https://amzn.to/3uCHQKu
